Thomas P.M. Barnett

 CURRENTLY:

• Principal Business Strategist, Throughline Inc (Washington DC)
• Managing Partner, Barnett Consulting LLC (Yellow Springs OH)

EDUCATION:

• B.A. in International Relations and Russian Literature, University of Wisconsin
• Certificate, Russian Language, Leningrad State University (USSR)
• A.M. in Soviet Union Program, Harvard University
• Ph.D. in Political Science, Harvard University

BOOKS:

• America's New Map: Restoring Our Global Leadership in an Era of Climate Change and Demographic Collapse (2023)
• Great Powers: America and the World After Bush (2009)
• Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating (2005)
• The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (2004)
• Romanian and East German Policies in the Third World: Comparing the Strategies of Ceaucescu and Honecker (1992)
• The Emily Updates: A Year in the Life of a Three-Year-Old Battling Cancer (eBook, 5 volumes, with Vonne M. Meussling-Barnett and Emily V. Barnett, 2011)

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a strategic planner who has worked in U.S. national security affairs across his entire career, while simultaneously operating his own consulting practice Barnett Consulting LLC. Dr. Barnett currently serves as Principal Business Strategist at Throughline Inc.

A New York Times-bestselling author and nationally-known public speaker who's been profiled on the front-page of the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Barnett is in high demand within government circles as a forecaster of global conflict and an expert of globalization, as well as within corporate circles as a management consultant and conference presenter. A prime example is his TED Talk, which has received over 1.3 million online views.  An award-winning professor, Dr. Barnett has written for Esquire, Foreign Policy, Wired, NationalReview, and Washington Post, and has been interviewed by Rolling Stone, Economist, Time, BBC World Service, CNN, Fox News, NPR, and many foreign media. Tom has been described by U.S. News & World Report's Michael Barone as "one of the most important strategic thinkers of our time."

Dr. Barnett is best known as the author of three bestselling books: The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century; Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating; and Great Powers: American and the World After Bush. Described by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius as "a combination of Tom Friedman on globalization and Karl von Clausewitz on war," the wide-ranging volumes have generated an enormous amount of reaction from around the world, leading to foreign editions in Japan, Turkey, Germany, and China, as well as profiles in major foreign newspapers.

Professor Barnett received a three-year appointment as the inaugural foreign research fellow for China's first-ever government-approved NGO on national defense and international security – the Knowfar Institute for Strategic and Defence Studies. During that timeframe, he also served on the advisory board of iJET International (Annapolis MD) and as Vice President for Communications at Resilient Corporation (Annapolis MD). For its initial five-year start-up period, Barnett was Chief Analyst for the world's first crowdsourced consultancy, Wikistrat Inc.

Tom was a Contributing Editor at Esquire for close to a decade.  He also wrote for two of its inaugural online blogs. During that time he also wrote for Time's Battleland blog and penned "The New Rules" column at World Politics Review.  

Prior to that, Dr. Barnett served as Senior Managing Director of the cognitive computing firm Enterra Solutions LLC. During that time he also wrote a nationally-syndicated print column for Scripps Howards News Service, and served as a visiting scholar at the University of Tennessee’s Howard Baker Center for Public Policy and as a visiting strategist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Before joining the world of technology start-ups, Prof. Barnett was a Senior Strategic Researcher and Professor in the Warfare Analysis & Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College, Newport RI, where he taught, and served – in a senior advisory role – military and civilian leaders in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, Central Command, Special Operations Command, and Joint Forces Command.  Following the 9/11 terrorist strikes, Dr. Barnett was placed on temporary assignment as the Assistant for Strategic Futures, Office of Force Transformation (OFT), Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked with OFT Director Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski (USN, ret.) on a cluster of strategic concepts that linked changes in the international security environment to the imperative of transforming U.S. military capabilities to meet future threats. Dr. Barnett published a number of articles explaining these strategic concepts, which he presented comprehensively in "what may be history's most famous Pentagon briefing," declared nationally syndicated columnist Jack Kelly.  Dr. Barnett delivered this brief well over a thousand times to a cumulative worldwide audience of more than several hundred thousand government officials, military officers, industry and think tank representatives, and opinion leaders. Pre-9/11, Dr. Barnett directed the Naval War College’s NewRuleSets.Project, an ambitious effort to draw new "maps" of power and influence in the world economy. The project was conducted in partnership with the Wall Street broker-dealer firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which hosted three full-day "decision event" workshops atop World Trade Center 1 (at the Windows on the World restaurant). Dr. Barnett’s first study at the college was the Year 2000 International Security Dimension Project.

Before his government academic stint, Dr. Barnett served as Project Director at the Center for Naval Analyses and the Institute for Public Research – divisions of the private research firm The CNA Corporation of Alexandria, VA. His major accomplishments: 1) co-authoring the U.S. Navy’s historic white paper . . . From The Sea; and 2) pioneering and managing CNAC’s contractual relationship with the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

Prof. Barnett penned, along with his spouse Vonne, a book-length manuscript entitled, The Emily Updates: One Year in the Life of the Girl Who Lived. The work, which describes their first-born's lengthy and successful battle with pediatric cancer starting at age two, has been published as an e-book serial (5 volumes)  in the fall of 2011.

The Non-Integrated Gap highlighted

Professor Barnett has a BA (Honors) from the University of Wisconsin with a double-major in Russian Language and Literature and International Relations (emphasis—U.S. Foreign Policy). At Wisconsin, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his junior year. Following Wisconsin, Dr. Barnett earned an AM in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia and a PhD in Political Science (major-International Relations; minor-Comparative Politics) from Harvard University. His dissertation was entitled "Warsaw Pact-Third World Relations, 1968-1987: Explaining the Special Roles of Romania and East Germany" and was subsequently published by Praeger. 

Thomas Barnett is also a Green Bay Packer season ticket-holder, and as one of the stockholders of the franchise, he feels it is essential to check up on his investment on a regular basis. His seats are located in the historic "South End Zone" of Lambeau Field.  Tom's maternal grandfather (Jerry Clifford) was elected to the Packer Hall of Fame in 1991 as a "contributor."

Thomas and Vonne Barnett live in Yellow Springs, Ohio with their remaining at-home kids.                    

The Core-Gap map as it originally appeared in Esquire, Mar '03